US Olympic Skeet Shooter Rips Gun Control

US Olympic Gold Medal shoot­er Kim Rhode is wad­ing into the gun con­trol debate and defend­ed the Sec­ond Amend­ment ahead of her com­pe­ti­tion in Brazil.

“We should have the right to keep and bear arms, to pro­tect our­selves and our fam­i­ly,” the skeet shoot­er said in an inter­view Wednes­day with Time Mag­a­zine in Rio de Janeiro. “The Sec­ond Amend­ment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our First Amend­ment, the free­dom of speech, and also to defend our­selves against our own gov­ern­ment.”

Rhode, who is the US’s most dec­o­rat­ed Olympic shoot­er, is set to com­pete in the Rio Olympics on Fri­day and if she wins a medal she would be the first woman to medal in six straight Olympic games.

The Cal­i­for­nia native said that she hopes to pass shoot­ing along to her three-year-old son “when he becomes of age.”

“I start­ed when I was like 7 or 8 years old, and it was some­thing that was a big deal in my fam­i­ly, to gain that rite of pas­sage,” she said.

The skeet shoot­er also crit­i­cized gun con­trol mea­sures that were passed in Cal­i­for­nia fol­low­ing the Decem­ber 2015 San Bernardi­no ter­ror attack that left 14 dead.

“I shoot 500 to 1,000 rounds a day, so hav­ing to do a back­ground check every time I pur­chase ammo, or every time I want to bring ammo in or out of a com­pe­ti­tion or a match, those are very chal­leng­ing for me,” said Rhode, who addressed the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Tam­pa.

She also lament­ed laws that would require her to reg­is­ter guns passed down to her by her fam­i­ly mem­bers as assault weapons.

“I’ve had guns in my fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions that have been passed down, and now I’m going to reg­is­ter them as assault weapons,” Rhode said. “And they will not be passed on to my son, or to me from my father. It def­i­nite­ly does affect me and give me a rea­son to speak out more.”

Rhode won her first gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and her fifth at the 2012 Olympics in Lon­don.